According to Jack, "Bridge Is My Game grew out of a 5-part series for Sports Illustrated. I accompanied Goren on a five-week bridge cruise to the Far East, during which I was to interview him for the series. It developed that he was having advanced memory loss and was of almost no help. Which left me with a commission to do a monster series and no information to do it with. And Henry Luce, a new bridge fiend, asking the editor every day when the phrocking series was gonna start. So I left the cruise in Hong Kong, flew home, bought and assimilated 21 books on bridge, developed a half-ass new style of play ("aggressive, swashbuckling"), and wrote it 'by Charles Goren, as told to Jack Olsen.' It's still around, somewhere. The Luces, Henry and Clare, loved it!"

FROM THE DUST JACKET:

Eight straight-talking, witty lessons from the unparalleled lifetime of Charles Goren -- to let you play and enjoy better bridge. Mr. Goren explores the various areas where skill is vital and where the most costly mistakes are made, and distills a few astonishingly simple guidelines. Here is his unique account of famous players and memorable hands; illustrations from his own years of learning enhance basic advice as he now lets you in on the tricks of the trade for:

• Being brave. The mathematics of the cards penalizes timid bidders but offers a big edge to players who take intelligent risks.
• Knowing how to keep your partner informed and your opponents off balance.
• The traps and triumphs of the double and the redouble.
• Making the best of an impossible partnership.
• How to "play the cards and not the rules". He proves that memorized conventions without a few grains of common sense hamper your enjoyment of the game, anger your partner, and delight your opponents -- as they rack up the points.

Seventy brand new quizzes and scores of hands that Charles Goren asks you to analyze with him, help to make this a lively book that will certainly improve your game, your temper and your winning streak.

Charles Goren has played cards with princes and presidents, on footlockers, in baseball dressing rooms, on airplanes crossing the Atlantic, on floodlit stages, and in more tournaments, gathering at one point more Masters Points and championships than anyone else in the world. A popular teacher and author, he travels extensively as professional, lecturer and TV personality. Mr. Goren is also a regular contributor to McCalls and Sports Illustrated; has a syndicated newspaper column; and appears on his own televised bridge show.

Bridge is My Game grew from an avidly-read five-part series that ran in Sports Illustrated and is written in collaboration with Jack Olsen, a Senior Editor of that magazine. Mr. Olsen became a Time correspondent in 1956 after a number of years as newspaper reporter, and it was while covering the federal courts in Washington, D.C. that he began playing bridge, as all the reporters did, waiting for something to happen. Since then he has written often of the game and its practitioners; his previous books include The Mad World of Bridge, and one on the special challenges of mountain climbing, Climb Up from Hell.